The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

One rat, popping up here and there, squeaking loudly, and taking a bath in the cream, could be a plague all by himself. After a few days of this, it was amazing how glad people were to see the kid with his magical rat pipe. And they were amazing when the rats followed hint out of town. They'd have been really amazed if they'd ever found out that the rats and the piper met up with a cat somewhere outside of town and solemnly counted out the money.

Not just another science audiobook and not just another Discworld novella, The Science of Discworld is a creative, mind-bending mash-up of fiction and fact, that offers a wizard’s-eye view of our world that will forever change how you look at the universe.

The Folklore of Discworld: Legends, Myths, and Customs from the Discworld with Helpful Hints from Planet Earth

Most of us grew up having always known when to touch wood or cross our fingers, and what happens when a princess kisses a frog or a boy pulls a sword from a stone, yet sadly some of these things are beginning to be forgotten. Legends, myths, and fairy tales: Our world is made up of the stories we told ourselves about where we came from and how we got here. It is the same on Discworld, except that beings, which on Earth are creatures of the imagination - like vampires, trolls, witches and, possibly, gods - are real, alive and, in some cases kicking, on the Disc.

Good Omens

The world will end on Saturday. Next Saturday. Just before dinner, according to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, the world's only completely accurate book of prophecies, written in 1655. The armies of Good and Evil are amassing and everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except that a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon are not actually looking forward to the coming Rapture. And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist.

Normal: A Novel

There are two types of people who think professionally about the future: Foresight strategists are civil futurists who think about geoengineering and smart cities and ways to evade Our Coming Doom; strategic forecasters are spook futurists, who think about geopolitical upheaval and drone warfare and ways to prepare clients for Our Coming Doom. The former are paid by nonprofits and charities, the latter by global security groups and corporate think tanks.

Dodger

A storm. Rain-lashed city streets. A flash of lightning. A scruffy lad sees a girl leap desperately from a horse-drawn carriage in a vain attempt to escape her captors. Can the lad stand by and let her be caught again? Of course not, because he's...Dodger. Seventeen-year-old Dodger may be a street urchin, but he gleans a living from London's sewers, and he knows a jewel when he sees one. He's not about to let anything happen to the unknown girl - not even if her fate impacts the most powerful people in England.

A Blink of the Screen: Collected Shorter Fiction

A Blink of the Screen charts the course of Pratchett's long writing career: from his schooldays through to his first writing job on the Bucks Free Press and the origins of his debut novel, The Carpet People, and on again to the dizzy mastery of the phenomenally successful Discworld series.

Nation

Thirteen-year-old Mau is the only one left after a giant wave sweeps his island village away. But when much is taken, something is returned, and somewhere in the jungle, Daphne - a girl from the other side of the globe - is the sole survivor of a ship destroyed by the same wave.

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Kate Schechter would like to know why everyone she meets knows her name - and why Thor, the Norse god of thunder, keeps showing up on her doorstep. Dirk Gently, detective and refrigerator wrestler, can uncover the mystery, and only the absurdist wit of Douglas Adams can recount them with such relentless humor.

Bloody Acquisitions: Fred, the Vampire Accountant, Book 3

With a thriving parahuman accounting practice, a steady relationship, and a circle of trusted friends, Fred's undead life has become more enjoyable than his normal one ever was. Unfortunately it also seems that he's no longer the only vampire to appreciate the up-and-coming city of Winslow, Colorado. A new clan of vampires is moving in, and they aren't well known for tolerating outsiders in their territory.

Truckers: The Bromeliad Trilogy #1

To the thousands of tiny nomes who live under the floorboards of a large department store, there is no outside. Things like day and night, sun and rain are just daft old legends. Then a devastating piece of news shatters their existence: the Store, their whole world, is to be demolished.

We Are Legion (We Are Bob): Bobiverse, Book 1

Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street. Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets.

Publisher's Summary

The town of Ankh-Morpork is in big trouble, and the City Watch is desperate for a few good men to protect it. But all they've got are the dwarves Corporal Carrot and Lance-constable Cuddy; the troll Lance-constable Detritus; Lance-constable Angua, who is believed to be a woman; and, worst of all, Corporal Nobbs, who has been disqualified from the human race for shoving! These underdogs need all the help they can get, for they've been given only 24 hours to clean up the war-torn town.

This is another great book with the rest of Pratchett's City Watch books. The reader is also quite good (as British readers almost always are). Unfortunately for the book, the recording quality changes dramatically throughout. There are disconcerting pauses and massive sound quality changes between each of the "chapters" of the book. At first, I thought I was bumping my iPod's skip button but it turned out that the recording has problems.

This is still a good book, and worth reading or listening to, but I would look for a different recording before I got this one, and would recommend actually reading it rather than listening to an audiobook, as I would for all Pratchett books (since they're heavily dependent on wordplay for their humor, and it's hard to get that when listening to the text).

I really do like Nigel Planer, he has a decent set of voices, a quick comedic delivery and a qualified narrator. His recording equipment and sound engineer were on holiday for this performance... I'd love to hear it re-recorded with decent equipment

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

Terry Pratchett delivers another decent and fun-loving book that explains a lot about how characters arrived in the situations they were in for the book "Thud!". (I read/listened out of order.) In this book, the most interesting part was the development and antics of Corporal Carrot. The whodunit aspect was a bit weak in my opinion though as the plot seemed a bit scattered and dry from Pratchett's normal standard. This did not affect my enjoyment but it isn't the best of the series so far.

Any additional comments?

I'll harp about the audio quality one more time. There are MANY sections of this book where it sounds like the microphone tipped over and fell on the floor, leaving Nigel to read to a muffled sock. Later it would transition roughly to crystal clear again but much quieter than it was when the muffled sound would creep in. This is ongoing throughout the book and most of it is spent trying to understand the words through the muffled and bass-heavy recording. I don't think the sound engineer showed up for work much and the recording gear sounds like it was scrapped from some old AM radio parts.

All of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series are absolutely great read aloud and Men At Arms is no different - Nigel Planner reads the stories very well with good & distinct differences for each individual character involved.

However the recording here is slow, destroying much of the enjoyment of other novels in the series. Hopefully this is an issue Audible.com will rectify soon. Listen to the sample and decide whether the sound quality is endurable to you before buying. If it is, then Men At Arms is a great and worthy novel to continue the adventures of Sam Vimes, Carrot & the rest of the Night Watch introduced in Guards! Guards!
A story which I am sure I will listen to over and over far into the future!

i love all the discworld novels,especially the ones that feature the nightwatch. but the recording on this one sounds off. nigel planer is my favorite reader but this recording is too slow,like a tape that is dragging(making his voice too deep and slightly slow)...or...this is not nigel planer at all. still enjoyable but it does not sound like nigel....i know it shouldn't matter but you get used to the characterizations...

Terry Pratchet does it again. All of the stories interweave and carry different characters forwards which adds a layer of enjoyment to following the series in order. BUT, because there are SO MANY of them, at this moment I am focusing on the night watch and witches books. I just find them hilarious. They are targeted right at my funny bone (and that's GREAT). I laughed SO HARD with this one. This is the second or third installment in the night watch portions of the story. The dragons one was extremely funny too. I use this series as a sort of palette cleanser between more serious draughts (life/books)... and it works for me. Anyway :)

The narration is good but the sound quality is garbage. It's old tech with far too much static. Terrible quality. I had to turn the volume way up to hear the voices over the sound of the background static. Occasionally the static would suddenly disappear, and the voices would be clear and crisp (but too loud, at the set volume). I'm frankly disgusted that the publishers are charging $48.00 for it ($26.00 for members). It's not worth even a credit. Good thing I had the book on hand.

The story is good. I love this series. I had already read the book, years ago.

Book 2 in the Discworld "City Watch" sub-series features the invention of a gun / gonne, with satire and parody relating to gun control and the ethical and judicial consequences of weapons possession — or rather, being possessed by a loaded gun. Another plot thread has to do with the rightful king of Ankh-Morprok. There's also a slight thread of romance, rocking Carrot's world.

Characters introduced in this book: At Lord Vetinari's decree, several new recruits join the Night Watch, to ensure diversity among the City Watch: Lance-Corporal Angua (sometimes a young policewoman, sometimes a werewolf), a dwarf named Cuddy, and a troll named Detritus. We also meet Leonard of Quirm (brilliant inventor), who shows up in several books. We also meet various characters from the Assassins' Guild (Edward D'aeth) and the Fool's Guild.

There's a great scene when the pompous pills at the Day Watch and the peacocks at the Palace Guard are overwhelmed by rioting trolls and dwarfs. The Night Watch comes to the rescue, and by the end of the book Lord Vetinari awards them with a new dart board (again) and another tea kettle (again). Even bigger bounty comes to Samuel Vimes personally and to the entire Night Watch collectively, but no spoilers here.

Sometimes, the tone gets a bit teachy / preachy, and some puns have me rolling my eyes, but still, jolly good stuff, with satire and parallels to current events.

BLURB FROM BOOK COVER:

"There's evil in the air and murder afoot and something very nasty in the streets. It'd help if it could all be sorted out by noon, because that's when Captain Vimes is officially retiring, handing in his badge and getting married. And since this is Ankh-Morpork, noon promises to be not just high, but stinking."